'Guardian' Installed Outside VSU's Odum Library

VALDOSTA -- Valdosta State University has added another
sculpture to its outdoor art collection, bringing the total to six
pieces.

“Guardian,” by Tallahassee, Fla., artist Mark Dickson, stands 14
feet tall and is made of welded steel, stainless steel, and bronze,
shared Julie Bowland, Fine Arts Gallery director and College of the
Arts professor who serves on the six-member committee charged with
building the university’s permanent art collection. The sculpture
was installed on Friday, July 27, between the Odum Library and the
Fine Arts Building.

“Steel is my love, for its possibilities are endless,” according to
Dickson’s biography. “Hammered, melted, heated, and welded ….
Though it is cold and hard, with the proper persuasion the steel
becomes warm and alive.”

A native of northern California, Dickson’s fascination with art was
influenced by his grandmother, who was a collector of art and a
museum docent. She commissioned works by abstract sculptor Peter
Macchiarini of San Francisco, Calif., inspiring her grandson to
want to learn how the shapes were contrived.

“I enjoy deconstructing ordinary concepts, the things we are used
to seeing in only one way, objects and ideas whose beauty and
intrigue we may have become immune to,” according to Dickson’s
artist’s statement. “When they are reconstructed in an abstract
manner, form is allowed to flow freely without the constraint of
the accepted norm, and the viewer is invited to rediscover the
ordinary object in a different way.”